Pals Davie, Slocum Know About Pressure

September 01, 2000|By Malcolm Moran, Tribune Staff Writer.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Best friends will stand on opposite sidelines Saturday, their uncertain professional futures re-examined with every change of possession. Notre Dame's Bob Davie and Texas A&M's R.C. Slocum will coach teams that may or may not satisfy unhappy fans at home. They have been living that life for a long time.

The difference between what happens at Notre Dame Stadium this weekend and a remarkable shared accomplishment 11 seasons ago is that Davie and Slocum no longer are dealing with the pressures together.

Davie's fourth season as coach of the Fighting Irish begins with a mandate for his defensive unit to discover an identity. In 1989, when Slocum was the new head coach of the Aggies and Davie was promoted to defensive coordinator, their unit needed all the help it could get.

The look back is revealing because it helps define who Davie was, what he is working to become and how his thinking has been influenced. He almost always hesitates when asked personal questions in public settings, particularly those that involve any comparisons with a predecessor at Notre Dame.

But when Davie was asked about his relationship with Slocum earlier this week, and recalled the day the Aggies stopped a Heisman Trophy winner, the words began to tumble out unchecked and the pen started drawing defensive alignments on a piece of paper. For just a moment, Davie was a daring young assistant again.

He turned 35 during the 1989 season, well on his way to becoming a coaching commodity worthy of a lot of short lists. Slocum was a first-year head coach. The two had discovered a list of things they had in common. They had played tight end for small colleges. They were both runners. They both had played the tuba. They had married their high school sweethearts. They believed in a system that allows assistant coaches to coach, not just follow instructions.

But as the season began to develop, the two sensed that they had a problem.

"The wolves were out," Davie said.

Are they ever not out? Slocum won 102 games in his first 11 seasons with a winning percentage of 75.7. In the last 40 years, Barry Switzer of Oklahoma and Tom Osborne of Nebraska were the only coaches to reach the 100-victory mark quicker.

But when the Aggies split their first four games in 1989, with the University of Houston coming to College Station, the new head coach and his first-year coordinator faced a desperate circumstance. Houston's run-and-shoot offense, guided by eventual Heisman winner Andre Ware, had averaged 59 points in its 4-0 start. The four-wide-receiver set, with its basketball-like pace, was terrorizing defenses.

"I remember going into that game, we were just so afraid of them," Davie said. "It was either going to be real good, or it was going to be real bad."

Greg Mattison, now Notre Dame's defensive coordinator, was a first-year defensive line coach. Kirk Doll, now the Irish's linebacker coach, coached the outside linebackers back then. Together, the staff produced a bold plan that bordered on reckless. They decided to challenge the run-and-shoot with a high-risk, high-stakes, high-octane game of chess in the Texas heat.

"We were kind of trying to just reassure each other," Davie said. "We weren't sure, to be honest."

He sat and diagrammed the scheme. There would be three down linemen, two undersized inside linebackers and six defensive backs. The hope was to use the passion of Kyle Field and an unrelenting series of challenges and bluffs to rob Houston of the rhythm that made the run-and-shoot so productive.

"We did two things," Davie said. "We either brought, in some form, seven guys on their six. We'd either come straight blitz and play straight man-to-man, or would block and drop all the little guys and just rush three. And it was either all or nothing."

The exhilaration of another time and place were still in Davie's eyes and voice. The scheme worked. A 17-13 Aggies victory attracted national attention, helped establish the daring image of the A&M Wrecking Crew and did not hurt the credentials of a bright young assistant.

"It just turned into a feeding frenzy, blitzing and the crowd and the whole thing," Davie said.

He was asked earlier this week about the rumblings in Aggieland and a former boss whose job security has been challenged.